After I'm Gone

by Laura Lippman

  Go

  December 8, 2012

  Sandy dressed with unusual care, selecting the tie that Nancy Porter had given him and putting on his best suit. He was going to meet with two ladies, after all, even if neither appointment was exactly a date. He wouldn’t mind if one were—but, no, that wasn’t to be. Get over it.

  It had been a shock, seeing himself on the news earlier in the year, during the hullabaloo over Bert Gelman’s confession. He had let Nancy take the lead, although the stat was his. At least Sandy was pretty sure that the murder had taken place in the park. Behind the old mill. According to Gelman, he had represented someone who had office space there and was reasonably sure it would be quiet on July 3. The guy was supposed to give Julie a big cover story about meeting someone for forged documents before continuing to the airport. After all, her passport was expired. Killed her in the parking lot, then either carried her or drove her across the stream. So that was why they hadn’t found casings at the scene. Just her bones and that sad, indestructible purse, holding a blank passport, a wallet, a lipstick, and an earring. Then the killer drove back to the mall. Took her car, moved it to the Giant. Probably took the Metro back to his car, which was why Saks had been chosen as the meeting place. Nice and neat.

  Sandy would never know what Bambi Brewer said to get Bert to confess, and he didn’t much care. It was his case, his stat. He had brought her in, and the daughter. He had played them against each other, sure that one of them would give him a confession he could use, and Bambi had done that, indirectly. Sandy had found the sales slip, matched the description of the earring to the one in Julie’s purse. Without those factors, Julie Saxony’s death would still be unsolved. Bert’s name, true to Sandy’s credo, had been in the file.

  What did bug him was how bad he looked on television. It wasn’t the pounds that TV added, he wasn’t that vain. But—was he really that rumpled? Had his once beautiful clothes aged that badly? Mary would be embarrassed. But now, with his consultant’s contract almost up, he was going to be making more money, could afford to buy the good stuff again. He hoped.

  His first stop was a row house in Butchers Hill. You had to look closely to know it was an office—very discreet sign by the door, with no hint of the business done within Keyes and Associates. He rang the bell, heard the tumblers turn. Good girl, he thought. No unlocked door for you in this neighborhood, not even in the daytime.

  Eddie’s girl—the kid had said wife, why did Sandy doubt him?—was as he remembered her from his onetime glimpse. Tall, broad-shouldered, more handsome than pretty, but with the kind of expressive face that grew on you. Firm handshake, clothes that looked nice, if kind of forgettable.

  “So Crow said if I’m serious about expanding, I should talk to you,” Tess Monaghan said, after bringing him into an office where a neon sign advertised HUMAN HAIR and a neon clock said it was TIME FOR A HAIRCUT. Her hair seemed normal enough, though. “Do you really think you’ll like PI work? It’s a lot of document stuff, talking to people, sweating the details. Incredible boredom at times.”

  “Sounds like police work to me.”

  “Are you comfortable with a little gray area? I sometimes fudge things to get what I want. Is that going to be a problem for ex-po-po?”

  She grinned, letting him know that po-po was ironic, that she was making fun of herself. He liked that.

  “I’m not a police anymore. I work on a contract, no gun, no badge. I could do the same thing for you. Only for more money, I hope.”

  “Depending on the caseload, there should be more money in it. And the fact is, I need another equity partner. I have a young child, I can’t do eighteen-hour days anymore.” She smiled with only half her mouth. “What am I saying? I still do eighteen-hour days, I just don’t do eighteen hours of PI work. It’s hard, finding the balance.”

  He nodded, as if he knew. Mary had been Bobby’s full-time caretaker until he went away. That’s how it was, even with normal kids, back then. Sandy had loved his son. He just hadn’t known what to do with him when all the little father-son dreams turned out to be beyond his reach. He wasn’t going to teach him to play sports or drive a car or how to fix things. They weren’t going to have father-son chats. Mary knew how to be Bobby’s mother in spite of his limitations. But that was another thing that made Mary special. Maybe instead of thinking what a failure he was, he could just remember how great she was? Problem was, that just made him miss her even more.

  He really needed this job. He needed something, anything, to keep him away from his own thoughts.

  “I don’t get a lot of cold cases here,” Tess said. “It’s dull, dull, dull most of the time.”

  “I could do dull. I like dull.” He decided to try to make a joke, although it was not his forte. “I am dull.”

  She laughed. He felt as if he had just scored a goal in a soccer match, even if he hadn’t played soccer since he was thirteen.

  “Want to start after the holidays?” she asked.

  “Christmas, you mean?”

  “Why, yes. Christmas, New Year’s. It’s a slow time of year for me, but it picks up around Valentine’s Day. That’s a big holiday for this business, I’m sad to say.”

  “I just wanted to be clear because Hanukkah starts tomorrow.”

  “I hate to stereotype, but I didn’t think that would be something on your radar.”

  “The next lady I’m going to see—she told me.”

  “Well, Baruch atah Adonai, Sandy.”

  “What?”

  She laughed. “There’s a Weinstein lurking under the Monaghan freckles.”

  That name rang a bell. “Like the jewelry store?”

  “The same, although that’s my uncle’s business.”

  “This lady I’m going to see—she has a connection to it.”

  She shrugged. “In Baltimore, you’d be lucky to make it to six degrees of separation. Usually two, tops. Isn’t that what brought you here?”

  Sandy had not crossed Bambi Brewer’s threshold since he searched it almost nine months earlier, and he was not sure how she would feel about his request to see her. He tried to tell himself it wasn’t his fault. You couldn’t close Julie Saxony’s file without dredging up the Felix stuff. Even if he hadn’t been connected, it would always be there, a part of Julie’s identity. Four years of her life, 1972 to 1976. She had gone on to run a couple of successful businesses. Helped other people—gave the chef a chance to start his own restaurant, pried Susie out of the Variety. But when it came down to it, she was Felix Brewer’s girl, and when her murder was solved, the newspaper ran the photo of her in her glory, the same one Sandy had found in the file. Juliet Romeo trumped Julie Saxony every time.

  Then again, Julie threw everything away when she got the phone call. Felix wants me? Screw the restaurant, screw Chet, screw my sister, screw Susie. Given the choice, she would be Felix’s girl.

  When Bert had come to Sandy and Nancy with his own lawyer that night, Sandy had gotten angry. He was so sick of this shit. How many people were going to try to cover for Rachel Brewer, who had to be the killer, even if her name wasn’t in the file? Opportunity, impulse, and stupidity—she had them all in spades. She and her mother had sat in their respective interview rooms late into the evening. When Bambi reneged on her promise to provide a confession, Sandy had shooed the other daughters away from Rachel, put her back in a room. He felt like a dad in that moment. No supper for any of you until you stop lying. Then Bert had returned with a criminal lawyer even better than himself, although Bert probably didn’t concede there was a better criminal lawyer than himself. They wanted to bargain, right off, but the state’s attorney wasn’t having it. Ultimately, Gelman agreed to twenty years, no parole. He was a healthy man, but he was already seventy and prison life was hard. It was unlikely he would ever see the outside again.

  And all for money. Your best friend blows town, you shortchange his wid
ow, then kill the one person who knows where the suitcase ended up. Didn’t some people ever have enough?

  Not that Bambi Brewer appeared to be hurting. Her apartment was in a high-rise called HarborView. When it was built, it had seemed ridiculous, this high-rise in low-slung South Baltimore, a sore thumb. A giant’s sore thumb. Now there was a Ritz-Carlton within spitting distance, a Four Seasons across the water. And the place must have views forever, across the harbor, into the mouth of the bay.

  Bambi’s apartment faced west, though. The view was rooftops and the big green hump of Federal Hill.

  “Let’s sit in the living room, Detective,” she said, gracious in tone but without any of the offers of hospitality that would signal she wanted him to tarry. Ah, well. It was just a little crush. Not even he took it seriously. Plus, she had a few years on him. But what could he say? She was a good-looking woman.

  The furniture was a little low for him, almost as if she wanted to make her guests struggle. She watched him ease his way into an armchair. “Felix refused to have furniture like this because he said it was uncomfortable. It’s not, but it’s hell getting in and out of it at our ages.”

  “I’ve lost fifteen pounds,” he said. What was it about her that made you want to blurt things out? He wondered if she had unnerved Felix, too.

  “How great, to go into the New Year with a jump on self-improvement. I’m afraid I might find those fifteen pounds before the year is up. Latkes for Hanukkah, then my daughter Michelle’s husband insists on a traditional Christmas.” She made a face. “My family wasn’t religious, not at all—my daughter Linda is the only real Jew in the family—but I still don’t like to see a tree. Plus, it’s confusing for the grandchildren. What are they, those Iranian-Jewish-Scots with a Chinese first cousin?”

  “Regular United Nations,” he said, knowing it was weak. He never had the patter. And this woman, she liked talkers, he bet. Felix Brewer had been a big talker.

  “Yes,” she said. “And it’s better, having a mix of things. I assume you come from mixed stock, too?”

  Why would she assume that? Oh, she was a typical norteamericano, had no idea how many blond Cubans there were.

  “No, straight-up Cuban. It’s not uncommon—the blond hair, the light eyes.”

  “Is that why they call you Sandy?”

  “No. I didn’t get that nickname until I was a young detective.” He couldn’t stop, he was that unnerved by her. “It was a practical joke. You see—I bought myself a briefcase. I don’t know why. I was just so excited, when I made detective. And I would carry this briefcase to and from work every day. I saw right away that it was stupid, but I was proud, I didn’t want to back down. I used it to carry my lunch, a thermos of coffee. But it had all these pockets, pockets I never opened. And yet, every day, it got heavier and heavier. Just a little bit. Turns out some guy was putting sand in the pockets I didn’t use. Figured it out when I turned it upside down one day. So—Sandy. With everyone but my wife, who called me Roberto.”

  “I don’t like practical jokes.”

  “Me, either.”

  An awkward silence, an unfortunate segue, but there was nothing to be done.

  “So when we searched your house, back in March. The shoebox.”

  “Yes, that was returned to me a while back. This time, I shredded the contents and put the box in a recycling bin.” A little sigh. “I miss Bendel’s. My son-in-law takes good care of me, but I can’t go that deep into his pockets. You know, even if there was any money left over, from what Bert took, I wouldn’t be allowed to have it. The federal government wants it for back taxes. But there’s not enough money left to make a difference. Or so Bert says.”

  “Something was missing. From your box.”

  “Oh, I know. Do you think I would have shredded the contents without going through it? I’m well aware what was missing, Detective.”

  He handed the envelope to her.

  “How did he get it to you?” he asked.

  “No idea.”

  “I’m not going to be a cop anymore. I’m not a cop. I’ve just come from a job interview, in fact. I think I’m going to be a private investigator.”

  “Sandy Sanchez, PI. You’ll need a fedora.”

  She wasn’t going to tell him how she had gotten the letter. Why should she? It was idle curiosity on his part. Besides, Sandy Sanchez’s questions hadn’t been particularly good for Bambi Brewer’s family. Or maybe they had. He couldn’t tell, and she wasn’t sharing. She probably assumed he had read it. He had. Read it and put it aside, in the file, but without tagging it as evidence. It wasn’t evidence. But it was a peephole onto one of the city’s most famous mysteries, and he couldn’t help reading. He was only human.

  “Well, then,” he said, standing to go. “Happy Hanukkah. Do you say ‘Happy Hanukkah’?”

  “Sure,” Bambi said. “Why not?”

  Bambi watched the sun set from her living room, another reason she preferred this side to the harbor view. Not that she had a choice when Hamish gave it to her. Beggars can’t be choosers. And Bambi knew from beggars. She had been one most of her adult life.

  It was getting close to the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. She never got over how quickly the sun went down, as if late for an appointment on the other side of the world. There was a red disc, then ribbons of orange and, bam, darkness. Still, there was enough light from the city around her to read the letter she knew almost by heart. It had been written on tissuey Airmail stationery. She never knew how he had gotten it to Tubby, and she had certainly never asked.

  April 5, 1986

  Dear Bambi,

  This letter will get to you long after this date, but I am writing it on Michelle’s 13th birthday. I know you will see that she has a blowout of a bat mitzvah, with all the trimmings. I wish I could be there. I wish I could tell you where I am, but all I can say is that it’s warm and the ocean is nearby, yet I never swim.

  I miss you every day. Every hour. Every minute. But at least I have a sense of you. The girls—who are they? How did they turn out? Beautiful, of course, because you are beautiful. But are they nice young women, Rachel and Linda? Do they have steady men? Are they good people, good earners? What is Michelle like as a teenager?

  I ran away because I thought I couldn’t live in prison. But these rooms, while unlocked, are prisons, too. I have tried to figure out a way to come back, but it can never be.

  I’m sorry for the pain I caused. It was wrong. I don’t know how to explain it. Perhaps there are no explanations for doing the wrong thing. At any rate, I’m not going to try. I hurt you. But you hurt me, too, by making it seem as if you didn’t really need me. There I go again, trying to find an explanation.

  You and our daughters were my greatest happiness. And the single best day, best moment of my life was in February 1959 when Bert and Tubby said we should crash that stupid high school dance.

  I hope you have been judicious with what I gave you. It should last a long time, but if you ever run into any difficulties, trust Bert.

  With love, forever and ever,

  Felix

  The letter may have been written in April, but it had not arrived until August of that year. There had been a strange comfort, knowing he was alone, but she still had to live with the torment of believing he had sent for Julie, because why else would she have given Rachel all that money and disappeared? Poor Rachel, incapable of asking for a single dime for herself, yet humbling herself before her mother-in-law to bail out her own mother. Bambi had never doubted that leaving Marc was the right thing for Rachel; Joshua was the far better man. That had been evident long before Bambi had learned of Marc’s affair with Michelle.

  She had told Michelle in no uncertain terms to keep the secret. She did not doubt that Rachel would forgive her sister, but it was too much to ask. And Bambi was an expert at knowing what was too much to ask.
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  She had kept this letter, surrounded by what she thought were boring receipts, of interest to no one, allowing herself to read it no more than once or twice a year, puzzling over its one clue, the nearby ocean in which he never swam. Mexico, apparently, according to Rachel. But then, that had been what Bert told Julie Saxony. Who knew what was true anymore. Interestingly, of all her daughters, it was Michelle, who knew the least, who had tried hardest to find her father. That was why she had gravitated to the tech industry in the first place, she had confided. But there was no search engine that could find Felix.

  No matter how many times she read the letter, Bambi always got stuck on the line about the happiest moment of his life, more than fifty years ago. How sad. It had been a great moment for Bambi, too, but she had had many happy moments since then. Seven grandchildren, the girls’ marriages. Seder dinners, birthdays. She was happy right now, alone in her apartment.

  She checked her watch. Time to pick up Lorraine. Bambi tried to see her as often as possible, to include her in family gatherings. Remembering how she had seethed under Lorraine’s pitying gaze over the years, she did not coddle her old friend or give any indication that she found her pitiable. And, in fact, she didn’t. It wasn’t pitiable to love someone who didn’t love you, or to love someone who didn’t love you in the way you chose, or to love someone more than he loved you. One could even argue that it was brave and pure. Besides, Lorraine didn’t know that Bert had acted out of anything but greed. Tonight, Bambi and Lorraine would drive to Linda’s for Friday night dinner, the youngest grandchildren already humming in excitement for the holidays. For the first time in a long time all the grandchildren would be there, from little Tatiana to twenty-six-year-old Noah and his wife, Amanda, who happened to be pregnant with Bambi Brewer’s first great-grandchild.

  Life went on, with you or without you, Felix. What else could it do?

  December 31, 2012

  Manzanillo

  The last thing he saw was the ceiling, an expanse of white. He opened his eyes, looked at the ceiling, then closed them and never opened them again. If he said anything, there was no one there to hear it. The maid found him the next morning.